Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025?

From	Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg
Subject	Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025?
Date	2026-01-09 12:01 -0500
Message-ID	<p7c2mkti91ctj2f1tic6d6lmc5lb7b5di4@4ax.com> (permalink)
References	(1 earlier) <10j9sfj$tshv$1@dont-email.me> <stgilkdefsnuhg09hlbh70l3u54bh367aq@4ax.com> <10jbvmb$1feqk$4@wilderland.ovh> <10jedf2$288mo$1@dont-email.me> <slrn10m132m.c52k.candycanearter07@candydeb.host.invalid>

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On Fri, 9 Jan 2026 05:10:05 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:
>Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> wrote at 19:01 this Sunday (GMT):

>> Everything's blending together.  Most of the more current RPGs have 
>> 'action' A lot of the Action has RPG elements.

>Genres in general feel way more fluid nowadays, I think

Genre-fluidity? Man, even video-game genres are going woke now! ;-)

     [No, I don't know what 'woke' means either.]

I admit, there is a part of me that wishes games stuck more to fixed
genres. Mostly, though, that's the part of me that makes spreadsheets
and wants to know what category to type into the 'genre' box of my
makeshift database of games. The part that actually /plays/ the games,
though, doesn't care as much.

But genres are such artificial categorizations anyway, and even from
the start, many games didn't neatly pigeonhole into a specific one. I
think one of the earliest games that made me realize this was Maxis'
long-forgotten 1992 game, "Rome: Pathway to Power". Was it a political
simulation? A tactical wargame? An adventure? An RPG? Visually, it
looked similar to their city-builder games. It was a bit of all of
those and this lack of focus annoyed me, even though --had I just
played the game and accepted it for what it was-- I probably would
have enjoyed it.

    [That's not to say "Rome" was the first mixed-genre game I 
     played; it was just the first one where I realized it 
     didn't neatly fit into one genre.]

Even when the current hierarchy of newsgroups was being created
(csipg.action, csipg.adventure, csipg.strategy, etc.), this
uncertainty was a major argument against splitting the group. There
were so many ways to interpret which game fit where... and some people
got quite vocal about it. "Take your damn Wing Commander post out of
csipg.flight-sim; that's an action game" said some, while at the same
time others said, "Take your damn "Wing Commander" post out of
csipg.action; it's a flight-sim!" Even _DOOM_, what we now consider a
quintessential action game, was considered by some to be more
simulation than arcade, and not appropriate for this newsgroup.
(By some, anyway. On the whole, most people here welcomed Doom. It was
just too popular /not/ to talk about). But it gives you an idea of how
controversial genres could be. 

These days, almost every game has such a mixture of genres that
pigeonholing them is all but impossible. They pick and choose from
idea used by dozens or hundreds of other games, and mix-and-match
those ideas to create something new. Very few games are single-genre
anymore. And that's not a bad thing.

Even if it does make my spreadsheet a bit of a mess. ;-)

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Thread

What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2026-01-01 12:14 -0500
  Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-01 09:34 -0800
    Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2026-01-02 13:30 +0000
      Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-02 07:37 -0800
        Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2026-01-03 00:26 +0000
          Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-02 17:25 -0800
            Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2026-01-08 01:10 +0000
              Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Gottfried Neuner <kyonshi@wilderland.ovh> - 2026-01-11 01:23 +0100
  Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2026-01-03 01:47 +0000
    Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2026-01-03 11:31 -0500
      Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Gottfried Neuner <kyonshi@wilderland.ovh> - 2026-01-03 21:55 +0100
        Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2026-01-04 06:09 +0000
        Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> - 2026-01-04 11:01 -0800
          Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2026-01-09 05:10 +0000
            Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2026-01-09 12:01 -0500
              Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-09 17:30 -0800
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2026-01-10 10:58 -0500
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-10 09:38 -0800
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> - 2026-01-10 14:42 -0500
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> - 2026-01-11 11:25 -0500
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> - 2026-01-11 08:55 -0500
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-11 08:46 -0800
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2026-01-13 14:00 +0000
                Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> - 2026-01-13 08:09 -0800
      Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2026-01-04 06:08 +0000
  Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? The True Melissa <thetruemelissa@gmail.com> - 2026-01-03 13:02 -0500
    Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> - 2026-01-04 10:26 -0500
    Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN DECEMBER 2025? phoenix <j63840576@gmail.com> - 2026-01-16 10:44 -0600

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